Make sure skills are useful

[Signal]

I guess I just got mad when I used almost all my skill points during character creation to make sure I had a righteous 4 in acrobatics (which also could be used as a lesser form of climb, by the way), only to find out that it's only use was to entertain that crowd, and you only needed a 1 in it. Or conversely, if I spent points to get a 1 or 2 in alarm disarm, but the couple of places you could use it would fail if you didn't have at least a 3. A 1 or a 2 in alarm disarm was literally a useless skill, like combat shooting.

This.

However the developers ultimately end up doing skills, it should be fun. It should not lead to anger, frustration, or disappointment in the game. The above is a great example of skills handled badly.

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

I guess I just got mad when I used almost all my skill points during character creation to make sure I had a righteous 4 in acrobatics (which also could be used as a lesser form of climb, by the way), only to find out that it's only use was to entertain that crowd, and you only needed a 1 in it. Or conversely, if I spent points to get a 1 or 2 in alarm disarm, but the couple of places you could use it would fail if you didn't have at least a 3. A 1 or a 2 in alarm disarm was literally a useless skill, like combat shooting.

This.

However the developers ultimately end up doing skills, it should be fun. It should not lead to anger, frustration, or disappointment in the game. The above is a great example of skills handled badly.

Yes. All that trial and error gets you invested in the game. If it's too clear how everything works all at once, that makes the game boring.

BTW, was it just me, or did Acrobat also help you in battle? I always give my characters Acrobat and Climb and improve those skills to level 4 on the sand dunes. I usually play fist-fighters, so they have brawling and pugilism too. So we have to walk up on the enemy to attack them, sometimes under heavy fire. I find the characters with Acrobat are able to dodge bullets! With that Acrobat skill, they get hit a lot less often by the enemy fire.

[Signal]

Yes. All that trial and error gets you invested in the game.

Not me it doesn't. It gets me frustrated if I feel I just wasted points in a skill that could have gone towards something more useful. Hooray Combat Shooting!

If it's too clear how everything works all at once, that makes the game boring.

Highly subjective. Some people (like me) want to know how the game works in order to make informed decisions during the character creation/advancement process. This is not saying that we want all the solutions to the game itself up front, this is merely saying we want to know how the mechanics of the game work - if a skill doesn't actually do what it sounds like it does, it would be nice to know that before we dump points into it and end up with a character coming out not the way we intended. I actually have more fun knowing all the mechanics before hand because then I'll actually do things like spend time coming up with "character builds" when I'm not actually playing the game (I did that in all the Fallouts ever released, what with perk selection and all).

[Lucius]

I agree Wasteland had to many useless skills. There should still be alot of options for skills though. I'd like enough skills so each character can start with 7 or 8 skills and each character have a few unique skills each. Just make sure all those unique skills have meaningful uses. I'll also agree that later, high tech skills like clone tech don't need as many uses to be viable.

[Drool]

I agree Wasteland had to many useless skills.

Technically, none* of them were useless. Each skill had at least one use, even if that use was horribly niche and overlapped by other skills. For instance, Sleight of Hand could be used on the stage in Scott's Bar. But so could other skills, as well as at least one Attribute. It was certainly unnecessary, but not useless.

*Combat Shooting is, of course, the exception as it was literally useless, but I believe that was a coding issue. Also, it only existed in the PC version.

[BadMojoRising]

http://goo.gl/mod/cm0d

The gist of how i want attributes and skills to compliment and be useful in plenty situations.
But as brief as it let me.

Also:
http://goo.gl/mod/9Ca3

Who wouldnt want all skills being as plentifully useful in their own unique ways as this, with compliments from attributes?

[Ronin73]

Since it has some relevance to the topic at hand here is an interesting blog from Chris Avellone:

http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/1/entry ... -symphony/

[paultakeda]

Since it has some relevance to the topic at hand here is an interesting blog from Chris Avellone:

http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/1/entry ... -symphony/

On top of that demonstrates why archetypes and preset origin stories could never top a player making a character sheet.

[Harpo]

Since it has some relevance to the topic at hand here is an interesting blog from Chris Avellone:

http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/1/entry ... -symphony/

I like the fact that Chris both seems to value role playing and that he recognizes some flaws with unbalanced stats and skills. I always thought that there could be some improvements to the Wasteland character creation to enhance role playing.